Once upon a time, Classical Queens was only a research paper. Then it was a podcast. Now, it’s a theatrical orchestra experience known as Classical Queens: Our Time, created by local Black artist Jessica Joy Harned. 

Our Time delivers a new way to experience theater, dance, classical, and popular music, taking the audience on an emotional journey into music history as never seen before onstage. 

“[It’s] the story of two black women who have become tired of the experiences that they have in classical music, so they travel back in time via a mystical river to learn from their classical music ancestors, Florence Price and Margaret Bonds,” Harned shares of her inspiration, referencing the groundbreaking Black women composers amid Chicago’s Harlem Renaissance in the late 1920s and early 1930s. “They become these two characters and learn from them, learn how to build community, how to love, how to succeed at their craft, and then they travel back to their time to teach that to the people now.”

Price and Bonds were classically trained composers who found music at a young age, both growing up with musical mothers and extensive education. Their works would marry the African American spirituals and folk tunes of their youth with the European classical tradition. In 1927, Price moved her family to Chicago to escape the racial violence that pervaded the South. Immediately, she immersed herself in Chicago’s musical ecosystem and organizations that had sustained Black concert music since the 1890s. Through the Sunday musicales held at Estelle Bonds’ home, the mother of Margaret Bonds and a professional musician in her own right, Price met Margaret, who Price would briefly teach and with whom she’d form a lifelong friendship. Bonds was nothing short of a musical prodigy. She studied at Northwestern University, where she faced near intolerable racism, but graduated with a Masters in piano and composition. 

I was adopted, and my birth mother was writing letters with my parents back and forth for a while. She wanted her daughter to have music and my parents wanted to give music, and so she chose my parents. The minute I could play anything, they had me in piano lessons and violin lessons. I danced, I did all the things. And then eventually it just kind of became part of me.

Jessica Harned on knowing music before anything else.

Harned herself knew music before she knew anything else. “I was adopted, and my birth mother was writing letters with my parents back and forth for a while. She wanted her daughter to have music and my parents wanted to give music, and so she chose my parents. The minute I could play anything, they had me in piano lessons and violin lessons. I danced, I did all the things. And then eventually it just kind of became part of me.” 

A Boise State alum with a Master of Music in violin performance, Harned has dedicated her work and artistry to championing and centering BIPOC voices. She is a Boise Philharmonic violinist and a Mariachi Sol De Acapulco member and has amplified education about marginalized individuals in classical music as a performer, producer, and teacher. Harned’s podcast, in particular, began her journey into the forgotten, yet extraordinary lives of women of color in classical music. It is Harned’s unique background and her desire to understand belonging and her place in classical music that drew her to Price and Bonds, women who did the most in their time and are remembered the least. 

Together, Price and Bonds became part of history, a hidden one. Both Price and Bonds received prestigious Wanamaker Foundation Awards in 1932, Price for her Symphony in E Minor, and Bonds for a song titled “Sea Ghost.” The Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered Price’s Symphony in 1933, making her piece the first composition by a Black woman to be played by a major orchestra. When Price’s Piano Concerto in D Minor was performed by the Woman’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago in 1934, Price ensured Bonds would be the pianist. That same year, Bonds became the first Black soloist to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

“I am inspired by those that created when every obstacle was against them. Those who use classical music as a voice, a protest against the culture. I think I learned from Florence Price and Margaret Bonds that nothing that they achieved by themselves was possible, but it was possible together,” Harned says. “It was possible in community, which then leads me to being able to produce a show [at the Morrison Center]. When things got hard, it was community that always helped me bring it together and make all this possible.”

Our Time is proudly commissioned by the Morrison Center as part of its MC Presents Series, yearly show offerings presented fully by the Morrison Center. Many MC Presents productions feature a unique learning component, and Our Time is no exception; it is a conduit for education and empowerment offstage as much as it is onstage. Harned plans to donate a portion of the orchestral work to interested schools, visit classrooms, and issue performance challenges to students and teachers, all to foster dialogue about the impact of Black and Brown art on American classical music. Back in the theater, Harned has also amplified local talent, hiring local audio engineers, voice actors, and other professionals, showcasing the immense talent within the Boise community to foster a vibrant and thriving arts scene, like the one in Chicago that uplifted Price and Bonds. 

I think I want to prove to Boise and to everyone outside of Boise that we have great artists here. And they may not be the artists that you think are the ones that hold that status. I want to bring voice, give power, and give people a space to be their fullest selves,” Harned explained. “There are so many interesting stories. There’s so many amazing people that if they happen to be of color, people don’t pay attention to, or they look past, or they disregard. I think that time has ended for me, that time has ended. And I think for a lot of other people, it has too.

Jessica Harned

Much of Price and Bonds’ work was neglected and abandoned in their lifetimes and after their deaths. Bonds composed over 200 works in her lifetime – 75 scores survived, only 47 of which were published while she was alive. Her showstopping Spiritual Suite, a series of three movements played at the close of her solo recitals as a statement of racial and cultural pride, was only edited and archived in its entirety for today’s pianists to rediscover and bring to life in 2020. It was one of her most popular works. Price had 300-plus works attributed to her, the majority of which she wrote during her 26 years in Chicago. Despite acclaimed performances there in the 1930s, Price struggled to field interest in her work, often rejected by publishing companies and orchestras. In 2009, 56 years after Price’s death, a substantial collection of her manuscripts was found in a decaying house on the edges of St. Anne, Illinois. As Alex Ross observed in the The New Yorker in 2018, it was more than just a discovery, “[N]ot only did Price fail to enter the canon; a large quantity of her music came perilously close to obliteration. That run-down house in St. Anne is a potent symbol of how a country can forget its cultural history.” 

Time and time again, indefatigable musicians, educators, and organizations have revived the lives, sounds, and voices of BIPOC performers after decades of silence. Our Time is a moment, a vision across musical boundaries, across history, for a future that redefines tradition, that centers connection, that builds up belonging. 

It’s a chance for something Price, Bonds, and every barrier-breaking musician whose past was forgotten and future uncertain fought for: 

“We need to create opportunities for people to immerse themselves in what things can look like if we all had a seat at the table.” 

This, here, is what Harned has created. 

Save the Date for Classical Queens: Our Time